This document discusses key concepts in task-based language teaching. It outlines that the focus is on meaningful communication through purposeful activities and tasks. Learners interact and use language to complete tasks, which can be real-world or pedagogical. Tasks increase in difficulty and build on learners' previous experience. Vocabulary and structures are used as tools to communicate. The document also provides examples of tasks and roles for learners and teachers.

1. UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGÓGICA EXPERIMENTAL LIBERTADOR
INSTITUTO PEDAGÓGICO DE CARACAS
DEPARTAMENTO DE IDIOMAS MODERNOS
PROGRAMA DE INGLÉS
CÁTEDRA DE LINGUISTICA
DIDÁCTICA DEL INGLÉS
Professor:
Nahir Aparicio
Participant:
Pérez, Veruska
Caracas, November 2011

3. Key assumptions summarized by Frezz (1998)
The focus is on process rather than product.
Basic elements are purposeful activities and tasks that emphasize
communication and meaning.
Learners learn language by interacting communicatively and
purposefully while engaged in the activities and tasks.
Activities and tasks can be either: those that learners might need
to achieve in real life, and those that have a pedagogical purpose
specific to the classroom.
Activities and tasks of a tasks-based syllabus are sequenced
according to difficulty.
The difficulty of a tasks depends on a range of factors including the previous
experience of the learner.

4. Categories of team performance function:
 Orientation functions: processes for generating and distributing
information necessary to task accomplishment to team members.
 Organizational functions: processes necessary for members to
coordinate actions necessary for task performance.
Adaption functions: processes occurring as team members adapt
their performance to each other to complete the task.
 Motivational functions: defining team objectives and “energizing
the group” to complete the task.

5. Language is • Meaning is primary in terms of outcome
primarily a means
of making
meaning
• Task-based instruction draw on structural, functional, and
Multiple models of interactional models of language.
language inform
TBI
• Vocabulary is here used to include the consideration of lexical
Lexical units are phrases, sentence stems, prefabricated routines, and
central in collocations.
language use
“Conversation” is • Speaking and trying to communicate with others through the
the central focus spoken language drawing on the learner’s available linguistic
of language and resources is considered the basis for L2 acquisition in TBI.
the keystone of
language
acquisition

6. Learning difficulty can be
negotiated and fine-tuned for
particular pedagogical purposes
(task can be designed to facilitate
the use and learning of particular
aspects of language)

7. Clock faces: Positioning hands on a
clock to show a given time
Monthly calendar: calculating
durations in days and weeks in the Maps: Constructing a floor plan of a
context of travel, leave and so on. house from a description

8. School timetables: Constructing Programs and itineraries:
timetables for teachers of Constructing itineraries from
particular subjects. descriptions of travel.
Money: Deciding on quantities to
be bought given the money
available.

9. Learners Roles Group participant
Monitor
Risk-taker and innovator
Selector and sequencer task Teachers Roles
Preparing learners for tasks
Consciousness-raising